Eddington

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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From the 21st-century maestro of fear Ari Aster (“Beau Is Afraid”), “Eddington“ focuses on the 2020 pandemic in New Mexico. The film is as tense and claustrophobic as you would expect from this new auteur. The pathos reaches the highest levels of Sturm Und Drang that one can imagine. While the cubist and confining horrors might be alienating to some, the director still displays his verve, albeit due to the main draw of Joaquin Phoenix.

Well-meaning Sheriff Joe (Phoenix) lives with his wife Louise (Emma Stone). They lead a very pedestrian life in Eddington. Joe gradually becomes impatient with the new restrictions under COVID-19 in his small New Mexico town. He has asthma and is usually mild mannered. People feel that he is a mascot of sorts. Gradually, the sheriff sees people act aggressively, selfish, and arrogant.

Sheriff Joe rails against mandatory masking, saying that he can’t breathe while seeing his constituents becoming belittled. Louise, who has PTSD, drifts away from him and he is harassed by the mayor’s self-righteous son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka).

Things go from bad to worse when Joe is crushed by the snub of his wife and is left with his overbearing mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell). Joe loses his temper and shoots a homeless man with Covid (King Orba).

Although the murder goes unnoticed, Joe becomes increasingly unhinged. Bested by the mayor (Pedro Pascal) in public and inflamed with jealousy, Joe kills the mayor and his son.

Soon Joe is a man alone against the wilds of New Mexico with nowhere to turn.

Midway, the charge of the film stalls, feeling like Joel Schumacher’s “Falling Down.” There is an abundance of shouting and gunfire and very little of the eerie energy that made “Beau Is Afraid” so compelling. The inhibited simply becomes a man out of control. On the plus side, one cannot deny the commitment that Phoenix brings to his Everyman role. Yet again, the actor is fantastic, especially after the main dramatic conflict.

There are some vivid Aster hallmarks to be seen: the macabre artwork of Louise that echo the constructions of “Hereditary,” or the appearance of Austin Butler as a cult leader. Even the fire designs later in the film are perfect Ari Aster calling cards.

With all of the shouting and Covid centered aggression, the film turns into Revenge mode and becomes weirdly conventional for an Ari Aster film. Absent is the horrible sense of visual dread, a feeling of the Great Unavoidable, the cinematic something that makes Ari Aster’s previous films so full of dark and magnetic magic, as if in a dream.

With all of the bombast, sweating and gunfire, the unusual is too described, and one wishes for stranger, more slithery things.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com